Margaret Thorsborne cannot forget the two stone-curlews -- their necks outstretched, their wings beating above the pitiless crunch of steel treads -- trying to chase away the bulldozer on the development site along the southern edges of town. ...

December 27, 1997, Saturday

''We need an Australian head of state,'' said Braniff Robinson, a 24-year-old Sydney real-estate salesman and property investor. ''Australia doesn't get the chance to express itself as a nation, when it's only a subdivision of English policy. Sure,...

December 25, 1997, Thursday

The 21-month-old Government of Prime Minister John Howard has set itself on a collision course with Aboriginal peoples over one of this country's most visceral issues -- land rights -- opening the prospect of new elections next year. Mr. Howard's...

December 17, 1997, Wednesday

As a tourist attraction, it hardly competes with Sydney's Opera House or Ayers Rock, but fat tour buses inevitably crawl along Hay Street, the brothel quarter of this hard-edged capital of Western Australia's goldfields. Skimpily dressed young women...

November 17, 1997, Monday

Pipe between her lips, wavy white hair blowing in the hot, dry wind, Clara George sat under a eucalyptus tree and reminisced about her 100th birthday party. ''It was a big mob,'' she said, brightening at the memory of the day in August when 400 of...

November 10, 1997, Monday

Herbert Cole Coombs, an economist who was governor of Australia's central bank for 20 years, advised seven Prime Ministers and was one of Australia's most influential public servants, died on Oct. 29 in a Sydney nursing home. He was 91. A...

November 5, 1997, Wednesday

Enriched by discoveries of gold and diamonds and tucked between expanses of treeless plains and an even vaster Indian ocean, Perth is a bright nugget of civilization amid much emptiness. Farther from Sydney than from Jakarta, Perth is one of the...

November 2, 1997, Sunday

''Don't pat their heads,'' Sherylee Randall, a conservation ranger with the state of Western Australia, advised as dorsal fins emerged below an early morning mist and sliced the ruffled surface of the bay. ''It's where they breathe -- their...

October 14, 1997, Tuesday

As with their robust brand of football, where under so-called Aussie rules almost anything goes, Australians are now playing a rough game of politics. This month, Prime Minister John Howard has been forced to dismiss three Cabinet ministers, two...

October 12, 1997, Sunday

THE VERTIGINOUSLY ANGLED road rising from the rain forest to the top of a hill known as 210 is open only to four-wheel-drive vehicles. Below, signs beside streams warn of crocodiles. At the summit, special-effects men have primed fire and smoke...